Mapping our world together

News — 14 August, 2012

Setting up the OSM ecosystem in Senegal 5: Building a local OSM groups in Louga

To continue giving a more complete picture of our activity on the Senegalese ground and our interaction with all types of actors, it’s worth mentioning the mapping party we held in Louga the 28-May at the office of a French NGO, the Groupe Energies Renouvelables, Environnement et Solidarités (geres) is working in the Ferlo region on thematics revolving around resilience to global change. The workshop was organized by Madicke Seck, a Senegalese mapper and the GIS expert of the geres. Madicke was introduced to us by Gael from OSM-France who trained him first on OSM earlier in winter time in Montpellier. We worked and achieved a lot with Madicke during our time in Senegal and became friends with him and his family. The mapping party brought together staff from geres, civil servants from ARD, AFC and ONF, teachers and individuals interested into OSM, all friends! Again the workshop went well and was seen as a first step towards the longer process of forming an OSM group in Louga to achieve the potential of using OSM within the work of those organizations. Thinking beyond Louga towards the valley of the Senegalese River as well as the Ferlo, it’s good to realize the linkages that exist between those OSM folks in Louga (one hour driving time from Saint-Louis) and the potential for OSM witnessed and experienced in Saint-Louis. The linkages are there through individuals (Madicke has family that lives in Saint-Louis and Guediawaye and his brother, Assane, works with GIS in Saint Louis at the Agence Developpement Communal), through institutions (geres and UGB have a cooperation agreement in place) to form a strong basis of an OSM ecosystem in Northern Senegal.

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Madicke teaching JOSM at his workplace, the NGO geres